


White Noise

by DVwrites



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 2spoopy, EVP, Gen, Minor Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Rally gone wrong, Spectres, implied character deaths
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-07
Updated: 2013-11-07
Packaged: 2017-12-31 19:23:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1035452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DVwrites/pseuds/DVwrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At first, Cosette was supportive. She understood that reasoning was absent during the process of berevement, and that Marius would have sought out some comfort from fate after it had so cruelly taken his friends from him, but was EVP really the answer?</p>
            </blockquote>





	White Noise

At first, Cosette was supportive.

Her careful eyes followed all the wires as Marius criss-crossed them, looking, as always, half-unsure of what he was doing, and she made note of all of the new things he brought into his study to ‘help’ him, and Cosette just asked if he wanted a drink of anything, and kissed him on the cheek before she left.

She knew what he was doing; he’d discussed it with her at length. He’d tried explaining.

She knew he’d liked astronomy – she knew he believed in fate.

She also knew that no one could ever properly fix themselves in the time Marius had had after watching those people open fire on his friends, and waking up from plural to singular – the only ami left.

He’d taken it so hard, at first, and Cosette had seen him take steps through recovery, and she hadn’t batted an eyelash when he’d put all the pictures of them up in the study, until almost a wall was taken up, and she’d let him sob into her nightdress in all of those times when he’d started awake and the tears were already halfway down his cheeks before he could stop them. At their wedding, she’d held his hand and stood up with him when he gave the speech Courfeyrac had written before the rally, when they’d been preparing.

He’d found it in the belongings box they’d given back to Courfeyrac’s sisters, and they’d deemed it an important thing for Marius to keep hold of.

It was in one of his drawers now. All of their things were.

She’d cleaned it out and found one of Courfeyrac’s scarves, and Joly’s hand sanitizer, and Jehan’s poetry, and when she came across Eponine’s necklace, the one from when they were children, she felt her own eyes well up a little and she cradled it in her palms for a good few minutes, before realizing that it would have been selfish to keep it, and to leave it in Marius’ drawer. She found all of their things, except R’s, and she remembered how upset Marius had been when they’d handed him a box for R’s things, and he’d realized that all that was in it could barely pad out a hamster’s bed lining.

Cosette understood like Marius’s grandfather hadn’t, who called witchcraft on the whole thing, and shunned Marius, yet again, for his involvement.

Marius had re-assured her that it was only a matter of time before this happened anyway.

She’d been supportive the first few times, when she met a bleary eyed Marius at the breakfast table the next morning, who told her he’d ‘had contact’, and looked hopeful – and then that hope passed and he mused that he hadn’t really been able to make any of it out, but it had been there.

Cosette couldn’t crush that hope, even if she didn’t believe.

So when she visited her father (he always asked how Marius was. Still somewhat broken, she’d reply, but they were getting there), Marius went back to his study and tweaked the dials on the radio and pressed the record down and sat there for hours, with his notepad, just listening.

He was half asleep when he got anything.

When his vision blurred back into some shoddy focus, and he straightened his back to find a woolen blanket covering his shoulders (Cosette had gone to bed already, then, he mused), he went to flick the radio off and join his wife in sleep. It was 2am, by his watch, after all, and he’d heard nothing before he’d fallen asleep.

Time to call it a night. His finger went to hit the button, when the white noise flickered out and a murmur sounded through it, barely audible. But Marius heard it.

“ _Love…together,”_

Marius froze, before moving his limbs in stiff motions to grab the radio, turning the volume up and putting it to his ear, eyes widening a fraction.

“ _Love will keep us together…”_

“Jehan…?”                                                                                                                              

His mouth went dry. That was Jehan’s voice. Jehan’s wonderful melodic voice and had it really been that long-…? And those murmurings behind Jehan’s much clearer, though still hazy, voice – his friends?

“Jehan, is…is that you? My friend, are you talking to me, from the dead?”

“ _Some people…aren’t novels, they’re poems,”_

Jehan had said that. Once, when Marius wasn’t paying attention, in the Musain. The Musain that had long since shut down past his wedding there. Was he really hearing this?

But just as Marius opened his mouth to speak again, the murmuring was gone, and the white noise returned the same as it always was before.

\--

Cosette tried to be supportive, and she’d been told that this was a natural part of bereavement. Ever since Marius had thought he’d heard Jehan’s voice, contacting him through that EVP…he’d been more hopeful to catch more, that his friends hadn’t truly left him. There was so much he wanted to say that he’d never been good at saying that he’d wished he’d had said before that day, and despite Cosette re-assuring him that no one could have seen that coming – it was a harmless rally, they’d thought – he’d held himself accountable for never saying them.

It was hard, though. This could be a lot more harmful than helpful, and she knew she’d have to intervene at some points. Marius was hardly coming to bed, and he spent most to all of his time in that study.

That radio was _always_ on record.

And that was how the second time happened.

He’d fallen asleep again, and Cosette’s blanket was on his shoulders, and he was getting up to go to bed. It’d been three weeks since that last incident and that budding hope was beginning to falter again.

But there it was again, all flooding back through the feed of the radio, static going haywire with barely concealed whispers threading through the white noise and Marius grabbed the radio and held it in front of himself this time, grinding the volume up until it felt deafening this close to him.

“ _She’s here-…says…need more vodka,_ ”

Marius almost choked on his own air.

“R! I knew it, I knew you’d…I haven’t heard your voices in…”

“ _Missed her,_ ”

“I...I missed you,” He tried, speaking into the radio, holding it so close to his face. His fingers were trembling. “Are you happy?”

“ _I know-…way around,”_

Marius swallowed the lump in his throat that formed at Eponine’s voice, a hotness forming at his eyes, having only just noticed her voice amongst the cluster of the others. “Eponine, I’m sorry…you’re life was so-…I never got you out of it,” He began, swallowing once again. “I wish I’d-…”

“ _It’s a brighter tomorrow,”_

_“My siblings-….they worry so much,”_

He caught the other voices – Enjolras, and Feuilly, and Marius realized that they couldn’t hear him. He thought they couldn’t. And that the liquid in his eyes had already overspilled down his cheeks, and his shoulders were shuddering.

He tried one last time.

“Courf? Courf, if you’re there, tell me what to do,” He began, voice cracking. “I feel as if you’re all still here, like you never left – but you’re gone. Tell me what to do without you,”

And nothing.

The white noise returned, steady as before, and this time, Marius put the radio back down onto the table and leant his head in his hands and wept.

From the radio, Courfeyrac’s voice sounded.

“ _..ile-…Marius-…_ ”

Marius lowered his hands, slowly, and, brows furrowing, swallowed the lump in his throat. “Courf?”

“ _Smile,”_

 


End file.
